This movie will remind you of Nanni Moretti's " La stanza del figlio" (aka the son's room", 2001) ;both movies deal with the same tragedy ;there are many similarities between them: the father's guilty feeling,the desire to meet their late son's (female) friend -I would not say "girlfriend"-.
Like the Italian movie,I would recommend this Dutch work ,but only for people with a strong heart :who can get over such a pain,the death of an only child,age 20?
Both actors are excellent and make us feel their distress ;the tragedy happens in a Jewish family (the grandma's despair in the cemetery may hint at the horrors of WW2) but it's universal ;religion does not seem to help the unfortunate parents anyway .
Blending masterfully present and past ,the woman director tells about the father's pride to have a son:he wrote a diary about his son's life and he intended to give it to him on his eighteenth birthday -"and I did not even do it!-
Feeling guilt , he wonders whether he did what he had to do for him ,if his work as a writer (the distraught grandma tells him that he lives in an imaginary world,although his books deal with true stories)took too much of his time at his son's expense (one scene in a bookshop shows father signing his books where besides him,his boy is drawing).
The scenes in the hospital are filmed with an admirable sense of propriety ,sparing of gestures and words ,avoiding any pathos.
The scene which,IMHO,climaxes the movie, in the one when the father is watching the recorded scene in slow motion and cries: "don't go!don't move forward!" ;then his wild ride on a bike on the fateful street.
A powerful work ,in which the director's restraint is to be praised.
